Here are answers to some common questions about NABITA.
If you don’t find the answer to your question here, contact us.
A: NABITA is the National Association for Behavioral Intervention and Threat Assessment, a national multi-disciplinary membership organization dedicated to supporting the work of behavioral intervention at schools, for colleges and universities, and in workplaces. Specifically, the day-to-day functioning team members (the BIT “Inner Core”), as well as peripheral members of these teams, will find NABITA an excellent resource for support, networking, and education. For more information, please view our mission and vision.
A: Any school, college, university, or employer who has formed, is forming, or is considering forming a behavioral intervention team or similar support system will find a beneficial community with NABITA.
A: There are many reasons to consider joining NABITA:
First, you’ll find a community of others who are facing the same questions, challenges, concerns, and issues you are. From violence to mental health concerns, all schools, colleges, universities, and workplaces are seeing an increase in concerning and problematic behaviors. NABITA is a place to share those concerns and learn how others are coping with and addressing them. You can pose questions to colleagues on the NABITA listserv, or, you can pose your questions to our expert consultants.
Second, NABITA will keep you on the leading edge of developments in the field. Members can share effective models, research, and approaches, helping to identify best practices.
Third, if you need support materials or training resources for your team, we have them available to our members. Relevant policies, sample protocols, reporting documentation, training materials, tabletop exercises, and more are posted on the NABITA website and are available as part of membership. NABITA membership tells your community that you are engaged in professional development, constant improvement, and shared learning about your team, its function, and its evolution.
K-12 Schools and Districts also have special discounted rates to most trainings, products, and services. The K-12 Professional Development Package additionally has six Certification Course registrations included in the membership year.
A: One distinction is that NABITA is truly multi-disciplinary on a number of different levels. Typically, you would find an Association serving the corporate world, or higher education, or schools. It is unusual to find one Association that serves all three constituencies. NABITA was intentionally created with this level of integration, as there is much that can be learned from one another about behavioral intervention best practices. Moreover, today’s school students are tomorrow’s college students, and the next day’s employees. Using NABITA to share information on generations of students and employees, we can help to prepare for their needs and challenges before they arrive with our respective institutions.
Another level that makes NABITA’s multidisciplinary approach unique is that it is the only association that counts among its members psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors (including career, EAP, advising, LPCs, Social Workers), student affairs professionals, principals, school administrators, health providers, academic administrators, K-12 faculty, higher education faculty, human resources professionals, corporate administrators, legal counsel, law enforcement, security, and other designated individuals. This cross-disciplinary support is truly unique to NABITA.
The listserv allows for any of the different teams to learn from one another, using the differences in BIT venue to learn about potential transferable practices. Finally, you’ll find webinars and trainings geared to each constituency, and you’ll find that the model policies, protocols, and certification materials are also specific to your type of work.
Our weekly NABITA newsletter brings you information relevant to the field of behavioral intervention and prevention, with current events and relevant resources. We also share a Tip of the Week, spotlight a resource relevant to field, provide news, and share information about our upcoming events. Lastly, we offer a number of Certification courses to meet the growing demand for new and unique professional development opportunities. Members of NABITA receive discounted registration rates for all of these courses, as well as the annual conference.
A: We’ve priced NABITA membership around the median membership costs of similar associations. We aren’t the cheapest, or the most expensive. We have also created a membership fee model that is the same no matter what the size of your institution or business entity is. For many associations, you pay more if you are larger than if you are smaller, but we rejected that model for NABITA. In a time of strained resources, we want NABITA to be accessible to any school, campus, or organization, regardless of size. You’ll also find that the NABITA model differs from many associations in our value-added philosophy.
You can expect a listserv, conference, and newsletter out of any association today, but we want you to be loyal to NABITA. When it comes time to renew, and you ask yourself, is the NABITA membership worth it this year, we want your answer to be “absolutely.” We want you to feel that you are getting your money’s worth, and then some. We want you to renew with NABITA, even if you let your memberships to other associations expire. So, we include event discounts, free publications and materials, whitepapers, webinars, and other value-added membership benefits. Higher levels of membership can get access to training videos, books, proprietary protocols, discounts, free certification course registrations, and more.
A: Definitely. Your colleagues and our resources will be invaluable as you improve and evolve your team model. Learn from their mistakes. Share yours. Have a clever solution? Tell others. They can benefit from your good problem-solving. Why reinvent the wheel at each school or workplace? There are others who are doing exactly what you are doing elsewhere. Share resources, team up for local training events, talk through tough cases with others who may have the expertise you need. Also, keep in mind that many institutions think they have behavioral intervention teams, and may have something similar, but not exactly what we have in mind when we talk about a formalized behavioral intervention team. View a summary sheet of BIT Foundational Issues and the Standards Self Assessment Tool. See how your model compares. Finally, the NABITA team is committed to helping to identify the latest research and trends for members.
A: Absolutely. Several of our useful resources are available for free, including the 2015 NABITA Whitepaper: Who’s on the Team? Mission, Membership, and Motivation. This Whitepaper should help new BITs to craft a mission statement, tie it to the strategic plan of the organization, and identify ways to ensure their campus knows about the BIT and its mission. The Standards Self Assessment Tool is provided as a tool to complement the 2018 NaBITA Standards for Behavioral Intervention Teams. BITs can assess their performance on each of the 20 standards in order to identify areas of best practice and opportunities for improvement.. Lastly, the CARE Team Manual is a template that can be used by BITs as a starting place from which to cut and paste some material into their own manuals. We offer this resource in an editable format and available with our Super Membership Categories that will allow you to easily move around the text and create a customized document for your own team.
A: NABITA has four membership categories: Individual, Team, Super, and K-12 Professional Development Package. You may upgrade your membership during your membership year at any time. Simply contact the NABITA team, pay the prorated difference between the membership you have and the category you want, and we will upgrade your membership.
A: NABITA uses a rolling membership system. Your membership begins when you pay for your membership, and runs for 12 months from that date. We send out several reminders before your membership expires, encouraging your renewal.
A: In order to be certified, you must attend a qualifying certification event. Once the course is completed, you will receive your certification from NABITA. Certificates for our training events will be provided to you electronically via our Continuing Certification Credit (CCC) program. What does this certificate mean? It means that you have tapped into the unparalleled expertise of NABITA and the other carefully selected experts in the field.
A: Please click here to purchase a membership online.
A: Every time you take a NABITA certification course, you earn credits. Those credits are tracked in our CCC system which you can access and use to ensure that your certifications are up to date. Track, update, and renew your NABITA certifications through our online professional development platform, the Continuing Certification Credit (CCC) program. Learn more about our CCC program here.
A: It’s now easier than ever to share your achievements and credentials! In addition to the certificates of completion provided by NABITA following a certifying event, we also offer digital badges.
These digital credentials allow users to present a record of their learning to anyone at any time. One of the greatest advantages is the ease with which they can be shared onto social platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, as well as shared organically via inclusion in one’s email signature.
Learn more about digital badges and how to use them here!